The St. Louis Cardinals are the 2006 NL champs... usually I feel something, good or bad, about any team in the World Series, but the Cardinals? meh. Its hard to get excited about a team that would have finished well out of the post-season in any other division. There's a lot of things that bug me about this team:

- Chris Carpenter - I can hear the announcers now, talking about how the Blue Jays let him go... nothing against Carpenter at all, I just fully expect Fox announcers to be annoying

- Scott Spiezio, the Clutch God in this Jeter-less World Series. See above.

-Scott Spiezio's red soul patch. Dear God I don't need to see shot after shot of little old ladies with red merkins on their chin. Any excuse to work the word "merkin" into a baseball blog.

- Juan Encarnation, cleanup hitter

- Hearing about the 1934 World Series rematch, as if there are 90-year old Tigers fans who have been plotting their revenge for the last 72 years.

- Some broadcaster citing stats from the 1934 World Series as though they will help predict how a current in-game situation will play out. I love hearing about the history of the game, but since every single player from that Series has died let's not pretend that the teams' all-time batting average with runners in scoring position tells us anything.

All of that in mind, the Cardinals are a World Series team, and I'd like to try to get excited about them. Here goes:

1) St.Louis is a great baseball town, where the fans know the game and really support their team. This is not a Tampa Bay or Raleigh winnng the Stanley Cup sort of city.

2) The Cardinals last won the World Series in 1982, so a whole generation of those fans has never seen it happen

3) Albert Pujols, one of the best players of our time. Its not his fault he bats between Preston Wilson and Juan Encaration

4) So Taguchi. The guy is listed at 163lbs and he looks like a guy who rented a Cardinal's uniform for his office Halloween party. How can you not cheer for a guy like that?

5) Scott Rolen. He was booed out of Philadelphia, where being a great 3rd baseman is enough to make people hate you (see Schmidt, Mike). St.Louis' win means he doesn't have to spend the rest of his life being the guy who's home run was caught by Endy Chavez